New duo set for home bow

10:30am Thursday 17th January 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

Dudley Kingswinford will play their first home game under the guidance of club stalwarts Neil Shillingford and Mark Lockley on Saturday as they aim to bring the good times back to Heathbrook.

The pair, who both played the majority of their careers in the DK jersey during the 1980s and 1990s, replaced Mark Wilson who handed in his resignation in December with the club sitting bottom of Midlands Division One.

The new duo picked up a morale-boosting win in their opening game away at Longton and are now eagerly awaiting the visit of South Leicester to Heathbrook this Saturday (2.15pm kick off).

One half of the new coaching set-up, Neil Shillingford, said: "To be put in charge of the first team is a wonderful privilege for myself and Mark.

"This club is close to both our hearts having played here during the good times and hopefully now in our coaching capacity we will be able to bring those times back to the club.

"It is a job we are really looking to get stuck into and hopefully we will be able to repay the faith the club have shown in us."

With the club facing a real fight to escape relegation the management pairing have installed a back to basics strategy in an attempt to turn around their fortunes.

The duo, who were in charge of the club's highly succesful U19s side until they were offered their new roles, also believe some of these talented youngsters will get a chance to take that form into the first team.

Shillingford added: "It's going to be a tough task to avoid relegation.

"We will be putting no added pressure on the side because we just need to regroup and give the lads some confidence and hopefully by going back to basics we will be able to achieve this.

"We have some very good youngsters coming through and I think over the next couple of months we will start to blood them as we look towards next season.

"Unfortunately we have got into a losing mentality this season and our job is now to turn this into a winning one."